A Change of Heart (30 page)

And in that one moment of realization, she knew that he saw everything that word did to her, remembered every time he had used it and ripped her to shreds.

“Sweetheart, look at me. I'm sorry.” He sat up, taking her with him, and sat her down, eye to eye. He cupped her face in both palms. “It's not your body, it's not your face. It's you. It's the peace that is you, the strength that is you. You're beautiful the way—” He searched for words. “You know that brand-new skin that grows over wounds, that threads together a surgical incision? It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. It looks fresh and delicate, but it's stronger than anything. That's the way you're beautiful. Just like that.” His serious eyes crinkled into a smile. “Shit. That was a terrible analogy, wasn't it?”

Despite herself she smiled. “Terrible.”

He leaned close. “You're beautiful because you're you.” His words were a caress on her lips. His whispered wonder filled her up.

Her body had brought her horrors; now it brought her what she had never hoped to have. It had always felt separate from her, like a cloak. His wonder soaked it into her being, wove it together with who she was. In this moment, in this precious breath of a moment, it gave him to her even as it gave her to herself.

She climbed into his lap, straddling him, her wanting an inferno, not caring about what she was doing, who she was, caring only about this man under her, so open to her, how could she not pour herself into him? How could she not give it all to him? Not just the skin and the limbs that entranced him. Not just the peace and strength that enticed him. She knew that was what he hungered for, his heart unavailable, but she gave him everything else too, everything ugly and scarred and hot and wanting and terrified and hopeful. Ripping past all she hid under, she took him into herself and she gave him everything.

“Jess,” he said, panting in her arms, their entangled bodies slick with their joining. “What are you doing to me?” He was breathing as though he had run until his lungs exploded and flown into a leap and found that he could fly. As though there was nothing beneath his feet. There was nothing beneath hers either.

She had no idea what he was doing to her either. But it was like having her body ripped from around her. From the real her that resided inside the shell that held things inside even as it kept them outside. This was being touched. This was coming undone. This was that moment in which you knew you had left everything behind and convinced yourself to go on living.

It was the cracking of an egg.

She saw the exact moment when the full force of it struck him too.

His eyes went wild, the blast of pain in them so violent she couldn't look away. He rolled over, taking her with him. For one second, his body remained suspended over hers on trembling arms, and then he dropped his head into her shoulder.

“It's okay, Nikhil,” she wanted to tell him. But she couldn't. All she could do was pull him closer, unable to bear the thought of him pulling himself out of her.

“I need to get up,” he said, the moment unraveling inside him and turning him cold. She clamped down on the sob that rose in her throat because she knew that he saw that she couldn't let him go yet, even as he couldn't stand to touch her anymore, couldn't bear to go on feeling what he was feeling.

“Go,” she said. “I'm fine.”

Still he gave her time. She almost wrapped her arms around him again to beg him to let her have more.

But she couldn't. She had to let him go.

He went, leaving her slowly, for all the agony in his eyes, withdrawing from her gently. Separating from her as though she were worthy of tenderness. Placing her aside as though she were precious but suffocating, a scarf of silk that was choking the breath out of him.

36

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

S
ometimes you had to chase your destiny, and sometimes it walked right at you and knocked on your window with its pink-painted nails.

Asif hit the button and lowered the window. The bastard politician's daughter had been glaring at the black-tinted windows, but all that rich-girl attitude disappeared as soon as she got a look at his ugly mug. Worked every time. “How can I help you, miss?” he said in English and then looked at his computer genius in the passenger seat. “Correct?”

“Perfect, Bhai.”

As soon as she'd seen him, she sensed danger and tried to back away. Smart girl. But he snapped his fingers, and his men were behind her in the time it took for him to grab her blouse and hold her in place. “I said, how can I help you?”

She was about to scream, but Laloo pressed the butt of his gun into her side with a “shhh,” whispered in her ear, and she thought better of it.

“I'm sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

He laughed. “Yes, all the bitches say that when they see my face. But I know exactly who you are.” The idiotic bitch had probably noticed his SUV trailing her for the past week and thought it was Daddy's bodyguards and thought she'd tell them to get lost. God save us from spoiled brats who felt invincible!

Given that she had two ugly bastards with guns behind her and Asif had her by her collar, she didn't look quite as terrified as he would have liked. Pale as a
roomali
roti. But other than that, no hysterics. He grabbed the two sides of her collar and yanked her blouse apart. The buttons popped and scattered. She yelped, but Laloo's handy
ghoda
at her back did the trick and she shut up.

A dark red scar ran down the middle of her chest, between her breasts, which were too small for his taste. But if her bastard father didn't stop fingering his arse, they'd have to do.

“You know where that came from?” he asked.

“What?”

He ran his finger up and down the thin, puckered line. “That thing that's beating in there. You think your life is more important than the person that belonged to before you?”

“Who are you?”

“Asif Khan. You should Googole it.” His computer genius laughed next to him. “Or even better, ask your daddy.”

“You know my father?”

“The question is, do you know your father?”

Finally, two men came running up behind her. What kind of
chutiya
bodyguards had her Daddy found her? It had taken them all this time to notice that she was being attacked in broad daylight? They were the ones he was interested in anyway. At least today. Right now, finding the red-haired bitch was more important than using this one to teach her father a lesson.

He snapped his fingers, and his men turned the guns on the two idiots, disarming them in under five seconds. She almost screamed again, but he yanked her close and spoke into her ear. “You make a sound and you'll watch them die.”

His men stuffed the two men in the back of the car. He licked her cheek; she even tasted fancy, and she started shaking. “A girl like you shouldn't walk up to stranger's cars. Didn't your Daddy teach you anything?” He gave her a shove, and she fell back in the dirt. Another snap of his fingers and they left her sitting there on her bum, her eyes so terrified, she would be waking up with nightmares for a good, long time.

37

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

N
ikhil rubbed his chest, his arms. Everything felt tight. It felt alien. He felt alien. As though something had invaded his body. As though despite what he wanted, what he wanted had changed.

In the mirror his grown-out hair stood in spikes on his head. Spikey. The memory of the name didn't rip his gut out. Instead of making him angry, the realization made him sad.

He lifted the razor from the cup on the sink and grabbed a chunk of hair at his temple. He touched the razor to his scalp. But his hands wouldn't do it. The fingers in his hair weren't a memory from long ago. The fingers now clutching at the strands needed purchase, needed him. And he couldn't take a blade to them.

He tossed the razor across the restroom and it broke apart, separating blade from handle, the disjointing making both pieces useless. In the mirror that witnessed his coming apart, Jen's misspelled name flashed across his chest and he rubbed at it, making it appear and disappear.

He had told Jess last night how he had spelled the name in English and the tattoo artist had translated a
J
for a
G
in Sanskrit and turned Jen's name to Gain.

Jen had loved that. Had declared it a more apt name for herself anyway.

She had told him he deserved being stuck with the error for not listening to her. She had asked him not to do it.

And it was.

It was.

Even dead she was still his wife. Even spelled wrong it was still her name. He rubbed at it. Not to erase, but to stroke, and stoke. To touch the word that had been her because he'd never touch her again.

Because he couldn't stop thinking about how touching another woman felt.

“I'm sorry,” he said to the empty bathroom, his whispered guilt echoing inside him.

He had sworn never to forget her. She was right: Nothing was permanent. He couldn't do this again, couldn't bear the pain of another impermanent thing.

Couldn't bear the pain of letting her go.
I won't ever let you go.
He wished he could say the words to her. Needed to say the words to her.

He had never had anything to say that he couldn't say to Jen. It had baffled him how much she had hated that. Finally, something he could have put in that stupid diary she'd given him.

Shit.

Her diary.

Holy. Shit.

How could he have forgotten about the diary?

He stormed out of the bathroom.

Jess sat up, Ria's pink sheets clutched beneath her chin.

“What's wrong? Nikhil?”

“We didn't find it in our things because those aren't our things.”

She glanced around, her eyes seeking out the clothes he had ripped off her last night. “Not your things?”

“What we went through in her apartment. That was just stuff, and stuff didn't mean anything to Jen.”

He went back into the bathroom and out the other door into his room and started scanning a bookcase.

Behind him he heard Jess get out of bed and scramble to pull on the clothes strewn around the room.

“Why didn't I figure this out sooner? You said she told you it was hidden in something that meant a lot to me, right?” He turned around to find her behind him, her hair tucked inside Ria's
kurta
because she'd pulled it on so fast. She had pulled on the
salwar
pants too. God forbid he saw her out of bed in just a
kurta
.

Jen would've followed him stark-naked. Jess was covered from head to toe, and disheveled. For the first time since they'd met, her perfect shell was gone. She was in complete disarray. She didn't seem to have any idea who she was, where she was, what he was talking about, and she didn't even realize that she was letting him see it. She was more naked than anyone he'd ever seen.

For all of Jen's comfort with physical nakedness, there had been so many things she hadn't been able to share with him. With anyone.

Jess watched him for answers with those naked eyes. His hand hovered over the row of books before he pulled out a leather-bound diary.

A moment of absolute horror flashed in Jess's eyes when she saw it in his hands. Then she collected herself just as he started to come apart.

* * *

The diary Nikhil was holding up looked almost exactly like another one she knew so well. Her heart started to beat hard and fast, and it had nothing to do with how restless he looked. Or how he had spared no more than a glance for her, but it had been enough.

He held the book up to her, a strange distance in his eyes. “I know where Jen hid the evidence.”

The face staring back at him had to be dripping guilt, but he didn't see it. Because his belief in her lies was absolute. In every ugly one of them.

She took the diary he was holding out and flipped it over, studied it, opened it, her hands desperate to do something. Her body was so used to being a liar, it moved on its own accord. A few pages had horrible handwriting scrawled across them.

“It's not in this one,” he said, mistaking her silence for confusion. “Jen kept a diary. She'd had it since before I met her. But she only started writing in it seriously after we met. Her mother gave it to her before she died and told her it could be a way for her to tell her things even after she was gone. Until we met, Jen said she didn't have anything to tell her mother.

“When we first met, I asked all the time to see it. I begged, but she wouldn't let me see it. When I wouldn't let it go, she gave me this one.” He took the diary back from her and studied the blank pages as though they weren't blank at all. “‘Keep your own diary,' she told me. ‘Maybe if you can write something in it that you can't say to me, I'll let you read mine.'

“I kept writing shit in it. Making stuff up. Because I didn't have any secrets from her. But she wouldn't cave. She said that if anyone read her diary, she wouldn't be able to write in it. I realized she really needed to keep it private and I let it go. And I forgot all about it. Shit. How could I have forgotten about it? She had to have thought it would be the first thing I'd go after if something happened to her. And me, I . . . I forgot.” He took the diary back and stared at it like it was going to disappear before his eyes. “How could I have been so stupid?”

How could she have been so stupid? How had she not realized Jen would put the evidence in the diary?

“That's where it is,” he said. “That's where the evidence is.”

What she should've done was ask him where her diary was. Because that would be the logical thing for her to ask. Instead, she stared at him, unable to say another word. Unable to add another lie to the pile of lies she was buried under.

He turned sad eyes on her and answered her question nonetheless. “It's not here. All these days of searching and it was never here. The cops have it. It had to have been in the handbag she was carrying. She kept it with her all the time. They took that bag as evidence.”

She thought of her own bag where her deception was zipped into a secret compartment. She had to get to it.

He stroked the brown leather in his hands. Those hands that spoke a language she wished she had never learned. “What kind of man forgets something like that about his wife?”

The kind of man who forgot himself when he lost her.

He looked so angry with himself, she wanted to pull him close. But she was part of his guilt, and she removed the hand she found resting on his shoulder.

What they had done last night rose between them like a monster they had spawned, all their combined regret and guilt struggling to dismember it before it destroyed them.

“Jess,” he said, and that one word held all the words she knew would follow. “I can't forget her. I can't move on. I swore never to let her go. This . . . Last night . . . I should never have let it happen.” He looked at the diary in his hand. “I can't do this again.”

She couldn't believe she didn't fold over. He waited for a response, but staying upright was all she could manage.

He was having no trouble saying the words. He had decided where they went from here. She should have been grateful. Because it made things so much easier for her. Since she had no choice where she went from here. The floor beneath her feet had suddenly turned to quicksand. She was sinking, but she couldn't show it, couldn't acknowledge that it was rising around her.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“I know.” And she did. “You didn't hurt me. You . . . you . . . healed me.”

A pained sound escaped him. Or maybe it was her. She stepped back, away from him, her hand shoving her hair behind her ear. She wanted to press it against her chest, where her scar tugged and smarted, wishing for her sweatshirt instead of Ria's
kurta
hugging her body.

Her body that for the first time in her life felt like her own.
You're beautiful because you're you.

So much he'd given her. This pain tearing her insides couldn't take away any of it. He'd given her back to herself. Taught her the pleasure she could feel. Taught her how to go after what she wanted, demand it.

God, she'd let him take her standing up against the bathroom sink last night with his family in the house.

No, she wasn't. No, she wasn't. No. She wasn't.

Now she knew she wasn't. He had taught her that.

And she had done nothing but lie to him.

If shame were a color, she had to be swathed in it right now.

“Jess . . .”

“No. I mean it, Nikhil. We needed this. You and I. That's all it was.” She had the evidence. She'd had it all along. Finally, her baby was going to be safe. “Thanks.” Her eyes were dry, all of her felt tinder-dry. There was a God after all. Because if she cried, if he saw how she was feeling inside, the shame engulfing her would consume her whole.

She turned around to look at the bathroom and Ria's room beyond it. They'd made love three times here, or was it four? “I'll pack. It's great. That you figured the diary out.”

“Jess . . .”

Jess, Jess, Jess.
His lips had whispered her name into her breasts, between her legs. He'd whispered her name into her heart. A name that wasn't even hers. Now, spilling from his lips, it stabbed her with her own betrayal.

“I'm sure the police will find it. I can go home.” Her baby, she'd left her baby alone. Now she could make sure he was safe. No one was ever going to touch him again. Because Joy was the only thing that mattered. Not the impossible dreams, not the man who had awakened them, awakened her.

He stepped close to her. But she scrambled back. She couldn't let him touch her.

“Don't be like this.” The guilt on his face was a mask of pain. He hated himself.

She couldn't bear that.

She turned, but couldn't walk away. She turned back to him, his beloved face, those sad, noble eyes that could turn so hot and molten one second, playful as a child the next, those eyes that had given her more than she'd ever hoped to have. She couldn't just walk away leaving that much pain in those eyes. She went to him and touched his face. He grabbed her hand, another heart-wrenching sound escaping his lips.

The lump in her throat choked out all breath. She wanted to push her words through it, the way he had made her push through all her horrors.

She wanted to tell him not to fight so hard. She wanted to tell him it was okay. She knew how firmly he had believed that there would never be anyone else to fit him like Jen. She knew his heart had felt so consumed by what he felt for Jen that the idea of anyone else ever finding an inch in there turned everything into a lie. She knew all of that, understood it, because that's how she felt about him.

He was her Jen.

Her hand was still grasped in his. He pulled it to his lips. He didn't even know it, but he was memorizing the feel of her against his skin. He was saying good-bye. Or maybe she was just projecting her own feelings onto him.

She tugged her hand away, and he opened his eyes. There was pity in them now, and his damn need to comfort her, comfort the whole blasted world.

“Jess, this isn't good-bye.” He dug his hands into his pockets to keep from touching her again. “I will always be grateful for what you've done for me. Your friendship means everything. It always will.”

Friendship? Is that what you called what they had done to each other last night? His eyes darkened with pain again, and she knew she had touched her throat, where his lips, his tongue, his teeth would forever be branded.

“Don't do that. Don't make this about sex.”

Her hand fell away from her throat. Of all the things he could have said, nothing could possibly have hurt more. They hadn't had sex, they had made love.

Again she tried to walk away. She needed to find what she had come here to find. Now that she knew where the evidence was, she needed to have it in her hands and get away. For all the lies she needed to get to, she couldn't leave this lie between them. “I'm not the one who's making this about sex.”